


Power in Thought

by Effluvium



Series: Emotional Excuses [1]
Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt Peter, Hurt Peter Parker, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-01
Updated: 2017-11-01
Packaged: 2019-01-27 16:28:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12585976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Effluvium/pseuds/Effluvium
Summary: The camera lens had never been a more terrifying force to reckon with.  But here he was, bandaged, thoughtful and final.





	Power in Thought

**Author's Note:**

> HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

“It’s always starting off that takes the longest,” the brunette glanced around the room, feeling finality for a long minute. “I’ve tried to record this almost nine times now. At this rate, May’s going to get back and start ranting on about how I don’t need to worry about these things, about how I have so much ahead of me in life.”

The room around him seemed small - had been getting smaller throughout the retakes and restarts, the “Hello!... damn, that’s too happy” and the “Hey, guys… fuck, now I sound like a depressed Tony… and that can’t go in there.”

“MJ says the same thing, sometimes. She’s different when you get to know her, different in the way that you don’t really know quite where she’s going, or how she’s going to get there, just that she is going to get there. She’s an amazing writer, too, and she has such a hard time starting off her stories. Have you read her stories?”

Peter paused, looking to his bandaged arm. “Her stories are amazing. So are her pictures, too; honestly, she’s so much more talented than she gives herself credit for.” He paused again, furrowing his brows. “I’m going off on a tangent, aren’t I? Sorry. I’m just always thinking about her - man, that’s cheesy. Sorry, MJ, if you’re watching this….”

It was nine-oh-seven. Patrol had ended early with him taking the shot to his arm and coming to the conclusion, after the injury, that he really should make something of a will. Writing a letter had crossed his mind, but there wasn’t enough paper in the world for what he wanted to say.

“This guy shot me in the arm earlier,” he held up the said appendage, “which kind of made me think.” Peter sighed, grimacing slightly when he put too much weight on the bandaging. “Made me think that… this stuff isn’t safe, obviously; I’ve heard enough Tony and May’s worrying to last a lifetime. This bullet could’ve landed somewhere else if I wasn’t quick enough. What if I hadn't been able to get out of the garage? What if Tony hadn’t gotten from the water, when Toomes dropped me? By the way, thanks for that, Mr. Stark.”

He momentarily didn’t know where to go off from that. There was something scary about talking to the shitty camera he’d held onto the past year and a half, the way its lens stared him down, how it didn’t stop recording when he stopped thinking, how it just continued and continued to document every breath, every word, every bit of hesitation in the sounds that came from his mouth. 

It was horrifyingly there.

“My body creates this kind of numbing toxin that flows through my skin, when I’m hurt.” Peter frowned, glancing his arm. “It doesn’t always work, but in those… dire situations? Like when the garage was dropped on me? It kind of numbed me, I guess. So I could get out, pull through.”

Nine-thirteen. It’d begun to snow in the time he took to talk, the cold coating his window in unrelenting frost, rendering the city lights to a faint blur, like when you take your glasses off and don’t squint. 

“I gave Ned quite a scare a few months back,” Peter said, looking back at the window, the quiet of the room settling into the crickets’ rattles and the hum of the air-conditioning. “He’s the ‘man-in-the-chair’, y’know? He loves helping me when I go out, and it’s great and all, but… I get hurt a lot, I guess. Sometimes more… severely, than others.”

He could remember the rain, most of all. The absolute downpour that his naive self had decided _wasn’t_ unsafe, and _wouldn’t_ hinder his abilities, and _wouldn’t_ slow him down; he’d been sick, too, that day.

_“You really shouldn’t go out.”_

_“I’ll be fine, Ned.”_

_“It’s raining - pouring, actually. And you and your miraculous immune system have finally fallen to the flu’s clutches.”_

_“Ned, I’ve got you. And you’ve got me - I’ll be completely fine.”_

It’d been a horrible thing to say, in retrospect. Thinking about it made Peter grimace, made him want to bang his head on his grey-paint-walls at the pure and utter stupidity of his actions.

_“Peter….”_

_“I’ll stay low to the ground.”_

_“Yeah, you will - your house is pretty down there.”_

_“Ned, I’m going to go out even if you don’t join the call.”_

“It wasn’t my finest moment, really,” he chuckled, as if he were trying to comfort himself. “My webs couldn’t stick to the sides of wet buildings, which, honestly, is pretty fucking obvious. My fogged-up mind just couldn’t comprehend it.”

_“Peter, grab onto something.”_

_“There’s nothing I can grab onto!”_

"Ned had been this kind of scary-calm,” Peter blinked, memories cascading. “He does that when he gets nervous, scared. He just kind of shuts down, stops thinking about the bad that’s happening, blocks it out.”

_“Activate your parachute.”_

_“Karen isn’t working!”_

_“There’s no manual way of doing it?”_

_“Shouldn’t you know? You’re the fucking man-in-the-chair.”_

“It sort of renders him untouchable, in a way.” Peter looked at his window again, not knowing whether or not to rest his eyes on the camera lens or around the room. “Not always a good way, mind you. He wasn’t exactly functioning when I was falling from the halfway point of Times Tower.”

_“Peter, you have to grab something.”_

_“My webs don’t work, Ned.”_

_“Use your hands or something! Just please stop falling.”_

“Five-hundred-and-twenty-five feet up in the air. Ned kind of broke a few seconds before I hit the ground, which luckily had been in an alleyway.” He huffed, rubbing his chest. “I broke my entire left arm, shattered my hips and crushed my left leg. I had a coma-worrying concussion, a hemorrhage, and my rib-cage had pierced my left lung. With anyone else, the fall would have killed them.”

_“Peter, I called Stark. He’s on his way - do you hear me? Peter, your chest cam isn’t working. Please talk.”_

“I was choking, and couldn’t exactly find air to breathe.” He hesitated, thinking. “Maybe that is a serious situation. May flipped out, and that was the first time I’d seen Tony cry.”

_“I swear to god, Peter. If you don’t keep those doe-eyes seeing, then I’ll tape them open.”_

“It was so weird, really, seeing everyone so… differently. Ned wouldn’t talk to me when I finally got back to school, May wouldn’t leave me alone, MJ was… quieter, I guess. I think she liked wheeling me around school for the first few days back, before my legs completely healed.”

His room was too quiet, too calm. He knew he should be out there, getting beat up, dodging and fighting. But he suddenly couldn’t, and it was a feeling he absolutely hated.

“There’re things that shock you back into reality, and Times Tower was one of them. I still have nightmares, ones where Ned wasn’t there, where I was at the top of the tower, where I fall and drown, water filling my lungs, air becoming a subconscious feeling.” He blinked, taking a quick breath. “The nightmares are uncalled for, really. It happened so long ago - right after Toomes - that there’s really no reason it should be affecting me now.

“Bruce, he says my neurological functions are on hyper-drive, that they don’t have a filter and that I can hardly forget things, forget anything. I don’t know why this happened, beings that spiders have no capacity within themselves to remember anything, but… I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me and my bizarre insides.”

Peter shivered suddenly, reality catching up to him with harsh and unrelenting speed. “Spiders don’t get cold but, then again, I’m not a spider. It’s November, and I tried fixing the heater earlier, when I first got home. I really don’t want May to be cold tonight.”

His clock’s words were red, the container black. _Nine-twenty-seven_. “I haven’t been sick since Times Tower, but the energy my body uses to prevent that eats my adrenaline up like candy. I feel awfully cold right now, and I’m having trouble staying awake.

“It’s strange, though, isn’t it? There’s too much to say, really, for this video. The camera’s dying; there’s a ticking in the back of it, a red light blinking with constance like I can’t see it. But I don’t feel finality, or quiet. It’s too loud now, too loud in a way that no one but me can hear.”

Peter gets up, opens his window, sticking his hand out and catching a palmful of snow. It’s cold, frigid; melts on his skin like cotton candy to a tongue. It smells clean, like an air-freshener without the scent, without the extra, without the unnaturalness of smoke clouds and fog machines.

“I haven’t read her stories, MJ’s.” He whispered finally, looking down at his hands, curling them up and picking at his short, grimy nails. “She doesn’t let anyone read them. So I lied, earlier, when I went off on that spiel. She’s too closed off for me to make any kind of proper judgement.”

It was nine-forty-six. His arm was effectively numb, his eyes drooping in exhaustion.

“When I asked her about it, she said her stories frightened her. Said that I wouldn’t be able to think of her the same way if I read them.” Peter blinked rapidly, trying to deter the sleep from his bones. “It’s weird to think of, really, because she creates those stories. Her writing terrifies her, which… I don’t know. There’s a sort of power there, y’know? Power in thought.

“I don’t know how to end this - MJ said that stopping is the hardest, too, because you’ll always think of something you want to say afterward, after the computer is away, after the camera is boxed up, after the video stops recording. There’s no such thing as a good note to end on, so…” Peter glanced at the lens, his brown eyes lidded and hazy. “Goodbye, I guess.”

_And I hope you never see this._


End file.
